Hi Forum
i want to assign my wired Mini a Static IP. i know how to do this but my question is to do with theRouter and DHCP addresses it hands out. Do i assign the Mini a number with the DHCP range or outside? assumed if i made the DHCP range ...20 to 255 then i would give anything with static IPs a number inside the ...1 to 19 range? is that wrong? i does it still need a number inside the DHCP range?
The only static IP you can assign is the one provided by your local router. Public IPs can only be provided by your service provider.
You can do either, however, if you can get your router to do the work, then if you take your Mac to another location, your fixed IP address will not get in your way. Generally I like to give my Mac's System Preferences -> Network -> Advanced -> TCP/IP -> DHCP Client ID a simple value that makes it easier for most routers to identify that this is the same Mac it saw the last time it connected to the network.
Yes, I understand your Mac mini is not likely to go wondering off and then return, but if you get a laptop, or iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, other device on your network, and your router is re-assigning the same fixed IP addresses, it will make life easier for you when you want to connect via IP address between any of your devices. Configuring each device separately is just annoying.
Another trick is to arrange for both the WiFi and Ethernet interfaces to get the same Fixed IP address from the router. That way if the device (a laptop for example) normally uses WiFi, but you find a large file transfer is going slow, you plug it into an Ethernet port, and since it is the same IP address, it will transparently switch from WiFi to Ethernet and get much faster file transfer, without interrupting the in-progress file transfer.
However, if you prefer making the assignment to your Mac mini, there is nothing wrong with this, as long as when you get a new router, you make sure it is still using the same IP address range. Some routers like 10.0.0.*, some like 192.168.0.*, some like 192.168.1.*, some like 192.168.2.*, so if you switch routers and it uses a different IP range, you may forget that you have your Mac mini talking on a different range, and then wonder why it stopped using fast ethernet, and has switched to slower WiFi because WiFi is still using DHCP assigned IP addresses.
I assume you want an 'internal' IP only from your description. I don't know why it's been made to sound so complex…
1. Boot the mini, use DHCP to get an address in the range your router hands out.
2. Note that IP & subnet mask in System prefs
3. Change the interface to use 'DHCP with manual IP'.
4. Enter the settings you found in 2.
5. Apply the settings.
The mini will now ask for this address on boot etc. It will be fine unless you allow another device to take this address, this is most likey if you have many devices & leave the mini off for extended periods. It's a pain to resolve this (lots of turn off & on again) so best solution is to reserve the ip for the mini at the router, in this case flip the mini to plain DHCP or a manual address.
NOTE: This next bit is from my experience…
If you choose an address outside the range of the routers leases (e.g. in your case 01-19) it is unlikely to perform NAT for that mini. This means local networking should work, but the mini can't get to the internet. (NAT makes local net to external net work).
That is my understanding of how home routers handle this, more complex routers - not sure, just test ;^)
PS use the mac.local name for connecting & the IP is less important.
Assigning my Mini a Static IP
